CLASS OF 1963 | 2015 | ISSUE 2
Tucker Andersen is semi-retired as an investment consultant. While he and his wife, Karen live in Warren, Conn., he spends two-and-a-half days a week in NYC doing consulting work. Karen was the UConn Master Gardener Coordinator for Litchfield County, Conn., for six years. She is now retired and concentrates on enjoying her garden, their dogs and their rural, 200-acre property. In their woods there is an abundance of wild life—coyote, deer, mountain lions (no tigers) and black bears. (Oh, my!) He’s seen two of the latter. Since mountain lions are solitary animals and it wasn’t breeding season and the two he saw seemed somewhat small, he thinks they were juvenile siblings. Tucker is about to retire from the Wes U Board of Trustees but will stay on the investment committee, which will entail his meeting on campus four times a year, as well as joining monthly conference calls for updates. Living in the “wilds”, he’s become “not a real birder” but is beginning to recognize some birds. The Andersens travel via a destination club—Exclusive Resorts which means they can go to wonderful locations—Newport, Kiawah Island, Tuscany, the Caribbean Islands, to name some they visited—and stay in luxurious accommodations. Tucker has run 40 marathons, including the Boston marathon twice. And while he had an entry for the ’13 Boston Marathon, fortunately due to a medical issue he did not run. He did run in it this year. His best time ever was in the NYC Marathon way back in ’78 when he ran a 3:32.43. And in ’13, two months to the day after a robotic prostatectomy, he very slowly completed the NYC Marathon. Happily his last two PSA tests have shown undetectable levels. He organized a mini KNK reunion at Wes U, which Don Sexton and Dave Buddington attended. A non-KNK attendee was John Kikoski, who just happened to be on campus and joined after walking into the room looking for someone else. Tucker and Karen have two adult daughters. Heather uses their Connecticut and NYC homes when not leading bicycle tours for adventure cycling or traveling, and Kristen (Wes U ’95), who lives in Denver, Colo., is a published author of I Never Intended to be Brave, a memoir of her solo bicycle journey through southern Africa.
After many years in New England, David Youngblood has lived for almost 30 years in Lexington, Ky. When I asked him why he moved south, his reply was simple: “I was chasing a lovely woman who is now my wife.” That lady would be Ellen Rosenman who, unlike David, is not yet retired. She is a professor at the Univ. of Kentucky and is writing a book. Her teaching and writing keep her very busy. David taught English for 20 years at Newton South High School in Newton, Mass., (10 years as department chair), and then, once in Kentucky, for another 29 years (23 as department chair) at Sayre School in Lexington. There he generally taught seniors, always an AP class or two, the other grades in English one time or another, and creative writing now and then. When I talked to David in June he had only been retired for five days and was “quite new at it.” But both being teachers, they’d generally had summers off and liked traveling. For their 25th anniversary, they drove the length of New Zealand, north to south. It’s a long way to go and they were eager to see it all. So while it was endlessly spectacular with lovely view after lovely view, in the end they were pretty worn out in that they had not given themselves much time to just stop and rest. Now they factor that into their travels. The Youngbloods have two daughters, one adopted. Ardilla is at V.C.U. in Richmond, Va., studying interior design, and Lizzie, who went to Vassar, works for a NGO in D.C. Both are 26. David still plays some tennis and stays in touch with John Vinton and wondered what had become of Larry Shultes. (Spoiler alert: I will find out for the next notes.) He recounted a vivid memory of his Wes U days: “I was racing back and forth through the halls having a snowball fight with other freshmen when a very irate student jumped out of his room where he had been trying to study and punched me in the eye.” Naturally, being a psychotherapist, I asked him in an understanding and empathetic manner, what he’d learned from that. And naturally, being a teacher, he responded assertively that he’d learned never to throw snowballs in dormitory hallways again.”
From Chambersburg, Pa., David Brill reports that he has been retired for four years from his medical practice in radiology and nuclear medicine. His wife, Elizabeth, to whom he has been married for 11 years, is also retired from being an editor for a religious book publisher. They do some traveling and had a wonderful cruise on the Danube River to celebrate his retirement. They have also visited Tuscany. But he has a special fondness for the American West, where he loves to bird watch. He has introduced Elizabeth to bird watching, which she enjoys but not with quite the passion he has for it. (As I am a birder, too, we talked birding a lot.) He got into birding when on a trip to the Galápagos Islands, he met J.J. Hickey, a renowned American birder who was on the same cruise. Once he learned of Hickey’s credentials, he approached him and they talked birding. From that talk, David said he learned a lot about identifying birds and became interested in getting into birding. As for being retired, he goes to the gym and some Bible studies but mostly he calls himself “a self employed dilettante,” by which he means that what he likes best is just doing whatever he wants—and that is learning about many things that he could not pursue when he was working. He reads very widely in scientific areas outside of his own, especially in the natural sciences. He also likes history and art. He describes many of his days as involving sleeping, getting up, eating, reading and then reading some more. He says that is a payoff from a liberal education, a desire to keep learning. Also he recalled that he had an intellectual inferiority complex coming to WesU from a public school. He thought that he’d be way behind the prep school guys. Unfortunately he did feel overwhelmed and that lasted for about three years until he was told he was the top guy in the bottom quarter of the class. This seemed to fire him up and he says he began to strive to “catch up” and he had a good senior year. After graduation he kept on “catching up” and continued to do so long after others had gotten to wherever their level of satisfaction was and started resting. He never “rested.” That helped him go far in his career and appears to be continuing.
RON TALLMAN from t. Augustine , FL said that right now the big excitement is that one of his daughters from his previous marriage, Kelly Clements has just been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees for the UN. She started her career in government way back as a Presidential Intern with Pres. George H. W. Bush and now this. She will be moving to Geneva. He has a second daughter, Jennifer who teaches elementary school in SC and between the two he has 5 grandchildren, ages 8-20. Ron retired at a. 61 due to health reasons and it was then that he and his wife, Noel moved from Chicago to St. Augustine, FL. He developed Cervical Dystonia which limits his physical activities more and more now. Prior to his retirement he had been Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Three years ago Noel also retired. she had owned her own ad agency. He’s not sure how the got into it, but they really like going on cruises. The went to Tahiti last year and will go to the Open in the UK this year and then cruise way up the Norwegian coast, perhaps even encountering the newly emboldened Russian navy. And in the Fall they will go to Lisbon and then cruise in the in the Mediterranean. He has fond memories of their exciting encounter with the tail end of a fierce hurricane in the N. Atlantic. Ron played #3 on the WESU golf team but due to his physical ailments, now thinks his golfing days may be ended. He also remembers that he “kind of lost track” academically and being young and “seeking adventure”, he and JOHN BURT (initially of ’64 but eventually of ’65) left WESU Jan. ’62 for Europe and returned Nov. ’62. (Dean Barlow told them he was sure they’d never return to WESU.) They visited pretty much most of Europe, drank “a 1000 bottles of wine, hundreds of bottles of beer and there were all those young ladies to befriend”. The last month of their European jaunt they lived on “.50 cents a day room and board”. A surprised but pleased Dean Barlow readmitted them and he found his lost academic track and actually graduated with the class of ’64. “But I identify with the class of ’63” says he. Ron then went to the University of Maine, got a Ph.D. in Canadian history and eventually became the director of the Canadian-American Center of the Univ. of Maine where he created the largest Canadian Studies program in the US (and the world outside of Canada) with up to 1,200 students per year enrolled in various courses. He was also president of the Assoc. for Canadian Studies in the US for two years as well as a founder and for many years, a board member of the International Council for Canadian Studies which allowed him to travel and lecture around the world.
Appearing for the first time in these notes in decades SKIP SHORT, living in Hamden, CT, has had a very interesting career or rather, careers. Not at all sure what he wanted to do for in life for his first three years at WESU, he took an inventory of his likes and found four areas of interest(1) artistic/scientific problems, (2)construction [“as a kid I was fascinated by construcion sites”], (3)analytic challenges and (4)people. So he decided that architecture would include all those interests and hustled to take courses (especially math) that he’d not needed before and after graduation, enrolled in Yale’s architectural program from which he graduated. While there he began to buy and renovate rundown buildings. And along the way met his first wife who became the property manager for what turned into almost 180 units. Eventually he became very tired of the renovation work so when he and his wife divorced he sold her his half of the units which she owns to this day and which their two children, Matthew, a 36 and Sarah, a. 31 now manage. For the first 20 years after graduation he worked for an architectural firm in New Haven. he eventually left and opened his own private practice for 15 years. But while he really liked dealing with clients, he did not like hassling with contractors or building inspectors and at age 50, walked way from the field. Wondering what to do, he noticed that his bookcase was filled with body/mind books. He decided to take a course in massage therapy at the CT Center for Massage Therapy. He liked it and learned the Trager method of massage which he practiced along with some more conventional methods from his early 50s up to three years ago. He now does a lot of volunteer work. With his architectural knowledge, he is very useful to and active on his 120 unit condo board. He is also very involved in a peer to peer counseling group in CT and an officer of the CT Butterfly Assoc. He recalled that he and ED FINEBERG used to relax while at WESU birdwatching in woods up towards Long Lane School. Skip married his wife Deborah in “01. She is an RN and is a Unit Manager in a Dementia unit.
